The Walk
by lunadatura
Summary: Post BDM. Spoilers. Simon & Inara, Mal & Kaylee. Simon and Inara come together. Serenity comes apart.
1. Chapter 1

_We all just keep moving on,_ Simon thought, _whether we like it or not. _

He pressed his hand against the window of the cockpit, imagining that he could feel vacuum pulling at him through the chilled glass. Above and around him, the stars whirled and turned into rippling blurs of light. The ship was finding its way through space, navigating the constellations in complex arcs, yet its artificial gravity made it seem as if Simon were the one still point in all the wheeling sky. He knew that he should be used to the sight – he had been aboard Serenity for nearly a year now, had turned his eyes to this moving skyscape countless times – but he still found it disquieting. It seemed, in a sense, emblematic of all that his life had become: he remained stuck to one perspective while the world changed all around him, leaving him with no landmark, no guiding star.

Simon turned away from the window to look at his sister, who sat at the ship's control panel, urging it through the sky. Her face was luminous, frankly enraptured; she loved space, loved moving in and through it, with a childlike purity. And so he tolerated it, because he had to be with her; he was brother and father to her, and would be for as long as she needed either one. In the wreck of his life, River had become his reason, his compass. Wherever she pointed, he had to go.

Mei-mei, he thought, what will I do when you don't need me any more?

"Form other primary relationships," River replied aloud, blunt and unflappable. "Though chances of success are minimal. Your social skills are problematic."

She didn't look at him as she spoke; she looked through him, past him, into the glittering void. Simon turned back to the mutable stars.

"Why don't you like Kaylee? She likes you," River said.

Simon detected an unusual sharpness in her tone – something very young, very much like real and personal anger. It relieved him to see that River was developing a sense of self, and that she no longer allowed herself to float, directionless, on the sea of thought. She was growing more sane and solid every day. Still, he was not quite ready for the inevitable conflicts that would occur as River came back into her own skin.

"I do like Kaylee," he said. "I like her very much. We're just… angry at each other."

When he turned back to River, her face was impassive and tense. He saw no compassion in her eyes. As usual, River seemed to care very little for his reasons, in spite of knowing him perhaps more completely than he knew himself. He wondered how he could look to the eye of a psychic: flimsy, translucent, a pitiful creature constructed of etiquette and science. He bowed his head.

"I'm sorry, River," Simon said. "I know that she's your friend."

He had been a fool, he thought privately, for taking Kaylee into his bunk – as if sex could solve all of their problems, as if his physical reticence had been the only obstacle they had to face. They had slept together for nearly two weeks, starting after the battle for Miranda, and on a purely physical level, it had been good: friendly, enthusiastic, not overly refined. When it was over, however, they were cast back into their separate skins, and back into the problems they had always known. Kaylee was volatile, prone to get carried away on gusts of emotion; Simon was private, hesitant and closed. She always seemed to need more than he could give. Finally, Simon had said something pointed and bitter, something he could not retract, and he had stalked out of her bunk. As the door had sealed behind him, he had been certain that he would never come back.

River narrowed her eyes, considering.

"I don't think you can do better," she said, finally.

Simon sighed, and pressed his head to the window.

"You're probably right," he said.

His mind wandered back to that final moment, the split second in which he had known he was leaving her. I need space, he had said – as if he didn't have more than enough of it, as if space were not all that he had.


	2. Chapter 2

As the night wore on, Simon crept to Inara's shuttle.

She let him in without speaking, already slow with smoke. Simon saw a shisha pipe burning on her tea table.

"Can you speak?" he said.

She shivered; his voice was velvet and gentle, almost tactile, frayed a bit around the edges with age and pain. Still, it was what she remembered; it was what she had craved, all day long.

"I can," she said, "if you want me to."

He smiled. It was like daylight, after ages of sunless space. She held his face in her hands for a long moment, then drew him down to her mouth.

"Does he know yet?" said Simon, as he pulled away. "Have you told him?"

Inara shook her head. Her dark eyes filled with regret. The captain was a fragile man; his bravado and swagger concealed a hurt vast and deep as the sea. After all he had lost, and all he had suffered, she could not bring herself to deliver one last blow: to tell him that, if she stayed on his ship, it would not be for him, but for a crewman that he tolerated with only half his heart.

"We're going to hurt them," Inara said.

"Yes," Simon whispered.

Simon drew her close and held her, surprised, as always, that such a lush, strong woman should be so very small in his arms. Her head nestled under his chin; he felt her lips at the hollow of his throat, pressing against his pulse. Her hair under his mouth was black and wild as smoke.

For the next half hour, as the ship turned toward dawn, they sipped tobacco from the hookah. The smoke was dark and vicious, flavored with syrup that tasted of apples. As they smoked, they drank black tea, heavy with sugar and mint, in enameled glass cups with copper handles. They had done this every night for a month, without fail or change. Although he had always deplored this particular vice, Simon had come to rely on it, to think of it during the day, in the moments that wore at the raw edges of his nerves. The sugar and smoke seeped into his blood, and numbed him from the inside out. The air of the shuttle was fragrant with vanilla and ash.

When the smoke was spent, he reclined back onto the couch. Inara studied his flawless profile, and the long, clean line of his throat. He had aged well, she thought, since the summer on Ariel – was it four years ago? was it five? – when they had first made love. She had given him a single night, free, honest, and lovely, and then she had gone back to her own life. Any longer or more serious liaison would have damaged her position in society. Nevertheless, Simon had wanted more. Inara knew that, and she also knew that her refusal had broken him, had given him his first taste of grief. Since that time he had sorrowed and scarred, but the wounds had given him a kind of nobility. He was no longer simply a beautiful boy, no longer a Renaissance marble piece, a perfect surface made to be caressed by gaze; he was a man of flesh and blood, flawed and needing. It seemed strange, that they should meet again in the wilderness; it seemed also fated. She had nothing left to lose by loving him, and she had nothing left to give him but the truth.

His collar was unbuttoned; his hair was disheveled, falling over his eyes. He looked bruised, exhausted. Inara could see the edge of a scar at his collar. She wanted him, wanted him more than ever now that he had learned to stand on his own; the thoughtless grace of his gestures, the innocence and honesty that shimmered in his pure grey eyes. She wanted to say this, but the words caught inside of her, mute and inadequate. And, so, she spoke to him in the poetry of flesh, which had become her only true language. She leaned over him and licked the dark, violet line of the scar; she let her tongue trace his throat until she found his mouth; she swallowed his moan.

"That's it," she whispered, her voice trembling, "that's what I like to hear."

She swung her leg over his hip, straddling him. The shimmering, rose-colored train of her gown settled over them, sighing as it fluttered to the ground like a wounded dove. Simon pulled away, slightly, to look at her; in his face, incredulity mingled with lust.

"W-what?" he said. "What did I do?"

"Your voice," Inara said. "The way you moan. You have a lovely voice. Especially when you lose control of it. I like to know that I can make you lose control."

Inara let her hand trail down his chest, savoring his taut, muscular body, and the way he squirmed, slightly, under her palm. She took his lip between her teeth, and bit it: gently at first, and then harder, bringing him to the raw edge of pain. He arched his back; she could feel his cock against her thigh, long, hard, and eloquent. They had come close, many times, over the past month; still, he had always refused her at the last minute. He wanted to be honorable; he wanted love to be formal and clean. But it never was. _You're not getting away this time, Dr. Tam,_ she thought, as her fingers slid over the waistband of his trousers. _You're mine._


	3. Chapter 3

"You see," said Inara, "I do understand you, Mr. Tam."

Simon strained against the leather. The hard, raw edges of his belt bit into the delicate skin of his wrists, wearing them raw. The pain flickered and throbbed, exquisite, unspeakable. He struggled, knowing that it would only tighten the restraints; his helplessness fed the dark fire of his arousal. Inara straddled his hips, pressing him firmly down into the bed, rendering him captive. She was wet; he could feel the moisture, thick and sweet as honey, as she slid up to his belly, and looked down into his eyes, with a soft, knowing smile.

"It's Dr. Tam," he said, "actually."

"Of course," Inara said. "How unforgivably rude of me."

She tapped a blade of honed and sharpened ivory against her palm. It gleamed, milky and treacherous, in the candlelight. Looking at the knife, Simon shuddered with pleasure and fear. She was bare to the waist, and as she leaned over him to check his restraints – tugging at them once, twice, sending shocks of golden pain-pleasure along his wrists and palms – her breasts, full and velvet soft, brushed against his throat and lips.

"If you have to tie your men up," said Simon, with calculated arrogance, "you ought to at least invest in decent restraints. You have no idea how many injuries are caused by amateur sadists."

Inara slapped him, hard, across the face. Simon moaned, and bit his lip to stifle the sound.

"The last thing I am is an amateur," she said. "If I injure you, I assure you, it will be entirely intentional."

Inara worked the blade between his thin, fragile undershirt and his skin, resting the chill flat of it against his abdomen.

"Don't move," Inara whispered. Her tone was solicitous, but firm. Simon lay still, not daring to disobey.

Inara tugged the knife up and through the cloth of his shirt, slicing it away from him inch by inch. When it was done, she sat back, smiling as if she were satisfied with her work. She settled her hips over his erection; the pressure and weight of her sent sparks of pleasure through his body, like Unification Day fireworks, and filled his closed eyes with light.

"You're mine," Inara said. "Say it."

"I'm yours," said Simon. In his mouth, the words held the weight and grace of a prayer. He was tired, tired of holding himself together, tired of following the rules: he wanted to abandon himself, to give himself over to Inara, who commanded his desire like an angel of the flesh.

Inara placed her knife on a low table near her bed, and picked up a small candle, holding it between two fingers, like a cup of tea. Through its crystal shell, Simon could see molten wax shifting, liquid and shimmering with borrowed fire. Inara extinguished it with a breath.

"That's an interesting hypothesis, Dr. Tam," Inara said, tipping the shell, sending a cascade of fluid flame onto his shivering skin. "Let's test it, shall we?"


	4. Chapter 4

Long after Simon had gone, Inara could smell him on her skin. It was a good scent – sex, sweat, and sleep – clean and pure as the man himself. As morning passed into afternoon, Inara filled a porcelain ewer with clear, cool water and the fragrant oil of violets, resigning herself to the fact that the night would have to be washed away. Regretfully, she unwound her robe and passed a sea sponge between her breasts. The water flowed along her skin like a second caress.

_So,_ he had said, in a foggy newborn voice, _did we just have sex?_

_Not according to most conventional dictionaries,_ she had said, laughing.

She had reached over his head to loose his restraints, and had taken both of his hands into her own, massaging them gently to help his blood flow. His fingers had curled around her wrists, gently, and he had brushed his lips across the point where her pulse beat through her skin, as if to send a kiss straight to her heart.

_I'm not… I mean, I've almost never done that before,_ he had said. She had heard his shy, frightened stammer return, had seen hesitation and shame flicker through his eyes. _Once. Twice, maybe..._

_I didn't think you had,_ she had said gently. _But I sensed that you could. And I enjoyed the thought. I was taking a risk. Everyone in the 'verse has a different way of making love, Simon - trust me, I know. As long as we both want this, we have no reason to be ashamed._

_Xie xie,_ he had said. The soft, sleepy Chinese phrase had brushed past her ear, soft as the wings of a butterfly, as he drew her down into his arms. _I've missed you._

Even after her bath, the taste of him lingered in her mouth. It was salt and sweet, redolent of the moment in which she had given him his release. She had tormented him with it for nearly an hour, drawing him to the edge of the precipice countless times, pulling away when his pleasure seemed most assured. As she had drawn away, she had tipped hot wax onto his smooth, pale chest, watching him gasp and swear, even as he arched his back to meet it. His agony had blurred into ecstasy, as she had always hoped it could. The mere sight and sound of him, her sweet, vulnerable Simon, writhing on her bed, had made her clench and come. In the end, he had opened to her entirely. _Lao de tien, a, ma sheng, ma sheng,_ he had cried. _Sweet god, now, now,_ as his fists had clenched and fought the restraints. When she finally set him free, all of his words had been torn away. He had spilled onto her tongue, like a fruit grown so ripe that it split of its own accord.

For the rest of the day, the memory of Simon filled Inara with a blood-deep flush. It occured to her that he was one of the only men she had not been able to forget immediately. He lingered; he stuck; she could not come clean of him. The thought frightened her. She drew a long, trembling breath, trying in vain to regain her composure.

_Merciful Buddha,_ she prayed, _bring us through._

Nothing answered her. The air of Serenity hung thick and electric about her, scented with ozone, like the wind before a gathering storm.


	5. Chapter 5

Kaylee liked machines. She liked the finite and tangible, the details of things, and she liked the way those details fit together, and gained meaning and grace as part of a whole. Many people dismissed technology – called it cold, or lifeless – but out in the black, machines were life. They made everything possible. Serenity sheltered her crew in her body like a brooding mother, enclosing them in an envelope of warmth and air, humming to herself lightly as she held the merciless black at bay.

It had hurt to see Serenity desecrated for the sake of battle. It had hurt even more to see her battle scars. But, though Kaylee lived to see machines in working order, she also liked the way they broke: their calculable, physical problems, which she could nearly always solve. Kaylee's work was her shelter. She could lose herself in it. No matter what happened inside or around her, when she set to fixing something broken, she slipped into a world where the rules were simple, and everything had a purpose – even lonely prairie girls with odd knacks and no dance partners. She was a mechanic; she fixed things. That truth was all she needed. It would pull her through.

"What in the name of fei fei du pien is wrong with my ship now?"

Kaylee stiffened as Mal strode into the dining hall. Although she couldn't see him, crouched as she was in the half-hollowed oven, she could picture his worn, familiar face clouding with frustration as he took in the wreckage, the dingy, glinting metal and ceramic parts that cluttered the table, and the floor smeared with motor lube and clotted grease. In her time on Serenity, she had learned to measure his footsteps. Today, he was stomping.

"Stove's broke, Cap'n," Kaylee said, turning to look him in the eye.

His face was just as she had imagined it: hard, surly, quietly warm. As she left the world of her work and eased back into her own life, his presence calmed and steadied her. She felt drained, and harried, and about a thousand years old, with a name pressing at the back of her throat -- Simon, Simon -- but she swallowed it back, and kept swallowing. If she could stick to problems what had solutions, she thought, she would be shiny.

"Mal," cried Jayne, "look what it done to my dinner pack!"

Together, they turned to Jayne, who stood at the edge of the kitchen counter, cradling a bowl full of gritty black ash. His face was frantic, almost tearful; he looked like a little girl with a broken doll.

"She's superheating," Kaylee said. "Going too hot, too fast. It's funny, kinda."

"Ain't nothing funny about this," Jayne said. "Look at my dinner pack, gorramit!"

"Yeah," Mal said, roughly. "Life's whimsical that way."

Mal knelt beside his mechanic and touched her arm, lightly. He saw vulnerability and panic flicker through her eyes at the moment of contact. She forced a tentative, half-sided smile, and looked down at the floor. She was, he thought, surprisingly soft on the eyes. Not his type, not really -- he'd always gone for the gussied-up, nose-in-the-air sort, much to his detriment -- but even now, with her hair pulled back into messy buns and her soft white undershirt covered in rust-orange motor lube, there was something about her that made a body want to rest by her side, tell her secrets, take comfort in her smile.

"It's my understanding," he said, "that you got a problem of the type that ain't easy to fix."

Kaylee said nothing, but Mal saw muscles of her throat tighten. She brushed her face with the back of her hand, as if to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear, trailing ooze and dust across her cheek. He wondered how she managed to look so fresh and clean – healthsome, kind of – even though her job had so much to do with dirt. She reminded him of boys he had fought with during the war, volunteers on the shy side of sixteen, whose souls seemed to shine out right through their skin, lit up as they were with trust in the rightness of the 'Verse. Those were the ones that died early. They would risk anything, would run gleaming into the hand of death, because they trusted that the purity of their cause would save them. It didn't. Good men did not necessarily win the day; smart men, strong men, would gather the planets like a handful of jacks, no matter what they stood for. When Mal looked at Kaylee, he saw the ghost of faith. He wondered how anyone could stand to hurt her.

"You and the Doc broke it off, huh? Good," he said.

"Yeah," Kaylee said, her voice tinged with an unaccustomed bitterness, "good."

"Don't try to sound tough, little Kaylee," he said, "cause I know you ain't. It's gonna hurt for a while. But my feeling is that all this is for the best. See, I got this policy about on-ship relations. It's in the employee handbook and all."

"There's a handbook?" Kaylee said.

Mal saw honest confusion flicker across Kaylee's face.

"Wo de ma," he said, "it's in the gorram cockpit, under the control panel. Why don't nobody ever read it?"

"I read it," Jayne called, from the other end of the room. "It says we gotta wash our hands afore using the bathroom."

"That's after you use it, Jayne!" Mal snapped.

"Huh," Jayne said, philosophically. "I guess that makes more sense."

He gazed into the distance, his face a mask of nearly bovine calm, as he digested the new concept. When his moment of contemplation ended, he snorted back into his throat and spat a gob of sticky, tobacco-stained mucus onto the floor.

"Jayne," Mal said, dragging the words from his throat in a show of patience, "is there any particular reason you're still here?"

Jayne shrugged.

"Stove's broke," he said.

Jayne watched the captain's face go carved and rigid with threat. He heaved himself away from the table and stomped heavily out of the room. Just like the captain, he thought, to get all tetchy over the least little thing.

Kaylee watched him go, and turned back to her Captain. Her heart felt like a mass of broken parts in her chest, sharp-edged and jangling. She trusted Mal, liked him; she knew he meant well, and underneath his tough hide he was softer than anyone she had ever known. Still, she wished that he would leave her alone, to fix things in her own way, or to leave them broken, as she saw fit.

"I don't understand why you're here, Cap'n," she said.

Her voice caught, as if her throat were lined with hooks. Only a whisper emerged unscathed.

"Let's just say," Mal said, "that I got more than one reason to wish Simon away from you. You're the heart of this ship, and I don't conjure that any stranger come from the Core has got the right to go in and start messin' with my ship's heart. You catch my meaning?"

"I thought you liked Simon," Kaylee said, her voice trembling with unshed tears. "You fought with him, fought for his sister."

"I stood with him, cause his stand was true," Mal said. "I'll allow that much. He's crew, and I respect that. But Kaylee, you're… more than crew. You're the one that keeps us flying."

Kaylee felt her tears surge up through her throat, and flow through her, along her face, carrying her hopes along with them. She had wanted so much, believed so much; she had always had courage enough to believe in people. Now, she felt betrayed in that faith, and she didn't know if she could find it in herself to be brave again.

"That's all right, then," Mal said. "You go on and do that. But remember – I trust you to make things go right."

As he stood, he laid his hand on her bowed head. She held his other hand, and they stayed like that for a while, still and silent, in mutual benediction.


	6. Chapter 6

Simon tipped a spoonful of milk into his tea and watched it stir and cloud, spiraling out into entropic fractal patterns as it faded. It was late afternoon, and he was taking tea alone in the dining hall. He wanted to go to Inara; he craved her warmth, her gentle and measured voice, and her closed and meaningful smiles. Nevertheless, he would not go to her until she called for him. Whatever had passed between them, it had been bone-deep, and as disturbing as it was blissful. He suspected that they both needed time to recover and sort out their thoughts.

"Don't act the fool, son," a voice intoned, hollow and languid. "You know what you're doing ain't proper."

"I'm sorry?" Simon looked up from his tea and saw his sister, standing slim and ghostly pale in the doorway. Light filtered in from the corridor behind her, catching in her tangled hair and giving her an aura of sickly yellow light.

"Sha gua," River said, spitting her words like hot bullets. "Pi tiao ke. Ni juede wo hen ben ma?"

"River," said Simon, swallowing his shock as he rushed to her side. He put his hands on her shoulders, instinctively, to calm her. "Please, come in. I'm just having tea. Are you… feeling all right?"

"She feels everything," River said, bitterly. "She can't not. You're not doing it right, Simon."

Simon guided his sister to a chair and set her down gently, stroking her hair. He placed the mug of tea between her trembling hands and curved her long fingers around the porcelain.

"Drink," he said. "It'll settle you down. Please, River – did something happen? I thought you were feeling better – I thought…"

Abruptly, River hurled the mug across the room. Simon ducked, as he felt warm tea spatter his face like blood. He heard a high, silver tinkle and crack as the teacup shattered against a far wall, somewhere above and behind his head.

"No placebos," she said, tearfully. "No rutting sugar pills. We had a happy ending. Lifted up into the sky, everything all right, everything forever bruised but unbleeding. We had a family, new one, better one. You're not doing it right, Simon. Ni shi pian ze! We're going to hurt them. Yes."

Simon sighed and pressed his forefinger to his temple in a gesture of bewilderment and guilt. His stomach felt heavy and cold, as if he had swallowed an anvil.

"River, I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry that things didn't work out the way you wanted them to. But you have to know that I am doing everything in my power to make this an honorable match, and so is Inara. We haven't told anyone yet because… well, it's not really mine to tell. Inara will inform the Captain when she sees fit. But, in the meantime, please know that I will never do anything to hurt you, or anyone else on this ship. You have my promise."

River studied him as if he were a worm in a dissection sim. Her eyes were narrowed, cold and serpentine, glittering with tears and fury.

"Don't say it to me," she said, pushing away from the table with lithe, animal grace. "Say it to Daddy."

Simon knelt at her feet, staring at his baby sister with growing fear and comprehension.

"What do you mean, mei mei?"

"I'm telling on you," said River.

Before Simon could rise or reply, River turned and ran, leaping light and fleet as an antelope through the far door and into the corridor. Simon ran for her, reached for her, called out her name. He was too slow. She was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

"What happens next?" Inara said. Her voice had been a harsh, breathless whisper; through the comm, it had been almost unrecognizable.

"I'm not sure," he said, fighting to keep his own voice level. "But I felt that you ought to be informed."

"Come to me," Inara said. The words were hot with promise and regret – red and gold and dusk-colored, like an autumn leaf falling to the pale stones of a courtyard. "Whatever happens, Simon, I want us to be together."

He sat at her feet with his head in her lap, letting her stroke his hair. Music poured through the shuttle, describing arabesques of dread and longing. A woman's voice, silver and glittering, curved up to an unimaginable bliss and fell away from it gently, as if she were afraid to touch what she wanted most. Simon closed his eyes and let the music carry him, its swells and hollows rocking him gently away from the present and into the past.

He remembered meeting her on Serenity - the single moment of charged contact between their eyes, as she came, regal and gleaming, into the rusty expanse of the cargo bay. She had assumed an air of nonchalance and chill, with all the skill of a trained actress - for she was an actress, if she was anything - and had moved forward onto the catwalk, greeting Kaylee, greeting Mal. She did not even betray the fact that she had seen him. It was for all the world as if she had not brought him to _Serenity_, had not given him the signs to know her by.

She had promised him, before he came to her, that her ship would be safe. It was not. He had learned that quickly. Mal had tried to throw him off the boat on his first day. Inara had kept him there by promising to leave with him, tying him to Serenity with a threat. He wondered, now, if that slim tether would hold. It was unlikely that the captain would want either one of them, when he found out their affair. _You'll ruin her,_ Mal had shouted, and Simon had stiffened, feeling the words hit home. Now, after a year of glances and swallowed lust, it seemed that the Captain's threat was finally coming true.

"I don't want to ruin you," he said, looking up at her, his mouth thinned with pain. "But I don't want to give you up, either."

"You won't," said Inara, firmly. "I won't let you do either one."

Simon rose from the floor to kiss her - chastely, at first, and then hot and fierce, his tongue flickering over her own in a way that made her gasp. She would not give him up; she refused even the thought. Their contract had been forged in blood and bone.

_I gave the boy a free thrust,_ she had said, letting the truth pass, disguised as a lie. _I will not be servicing you or any of your crew,_ she had said, and she had intended the words to be true. She had gone months without touching him, had spent nights crushing out the memory of his fine hands feathering over her breasts, his lips on her lips, the sleek lines of him, his gentle moans. But she had kissed him on the cheek, once, in a moment of weakness; when the life support had given out, and she had been sure of dying, she had taken his hand.

"How did we get here?" Simon wondered aloud, as he led her, gentle and eager, to the scarlet nest of her bed.

"I don't know," Inara said. "But I think we were always coming to this, whether we knew it or not."

He laid her on the copper satin coverlet, letting his hand pass over her lush, half-open lips. She kissed the tip of his forefinger, then drew it into her mouth, biting it gently. He shivered, and pressed his hips into her open thighs.

"This is right, Simon," said Inara. "No matter what happens, we are doing what we're meant to do. We fit; we interlock, lives and minds and bodies. No-one can take that from us."

"Are you sure of that?" Simon said.

"I am. Let me prove it," she said, drawing him down.


	8. Chapter 8

Simon felt nothing at first. He was only conscious of a vague, troublesome stirring in his sleep, as if he were at the bottom of a deep pool, feeling the dim ripples of a struggle taking place on the surface. Then, he felt himself falling.

He came down on the floor in a tangle of blankets and limbs. His head snapped back, hard, onto the corner of a low table, and he gasped as a star of pain swelled to glowing life in his skull. He opened his eyes, then, and looked up into the smiling face of Jayne Cobb.

"Captain wants to have a word," he said.

Inara leapt from the bed, wrapping a sheet around her body to save her shattered modesty. Jayne stopped her with a look.

"Sorry. Mal wants to see our boy stand on his own. I'm to take him to the cargo bay, once he gets his britches on. My advice," he said, drawing and cocking his pistol, "don't run."

Mal fingered the trigger of his gun. It hung on his hip, solid and steady, like an anchor. The varnished wood and metal of it had been worn smooth with long handling. He had used it to kill dozens, if not hundreds of men. He had killed for profit, for country, for love. He did not regret one of those men yet. He wondered if that was natural. He wondered if the regret would come to him someday, tidally, dragging him under the surface and drowning him.

If that's to come, it'll come, he thought. Best to do the work now, while I can.

He glanced back at Zoe, who stood behind him, cold and irreproachable, holding her weapon at the ready, like a good soldier. He could not read her eyes.

Simon entered the room, barefoot and shirtless, prodded along the catwalk by Jayne's gun. He could feel the cool metal mouth pressed against the knobby curvature of his spine. If Jayne pressed the trigger, he would almost certainly shatter the vertebrae, and perforate the small intestine (Simon thought of them in those terms, the vertebrae, the small intestine, as if they were examples in a textbook). It would not be a quick and certain death, but it would be a nasty, lingering one, and it certainly wouldn't be anything that he could mend.

"Your sister told me where to find you," Mal said. His voice sounded as if he had dragged it over a mile of broken glass. "Does that surprise you?"

Simon didn't answer, but he bowed his head, briefly, as if it were too heavy for his neck to support.

"You might also notice that little sis ain't here today," Mal continued. "I figured she might take exception to what I'm about to do."

"Are you going to kill me, Captain?" Simon said. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. After all, you've threatened it before."

Mal's eyes narrowed, steel blue and sharp as a knife caught in a shaft of sun.

"Jayne," he said, finally, "stand aside."

Simon tried not to tremble with relief as Jayne pulled the gun's hungry nozzle from his back and stepped away, into the shadows beneath the catwalk.

"After careful consideration, Doctor, I find that your employment here ain't working out as nice as I'd like," Mal said. "I've decided to terminate your services. You get off at the next stop. By my reckoning, that gives you about six hours to get yourself packed."

Simon squinted and gaped. He knew that he looked a fool, but he was helpless to hide his bewilderment and growing anger.

"You're firing me," he said. It was not a question. "You're leaving me with no resources, on a planet I don't even know, because… because what? You don't own Inara, Mal. Just because you were interested in her, and you thought she reciprocated your attention, that doesn't give you the right to…"

Simon never finished his sentence. Malcolm Reynolds drew his gun and fired.


	9. Chapter 9

What happened next happened fast, faster than the eye could tell, but if Jayne had to guess on it, he'd say the boy went down first. There was the particular electronic whoosh and crack of a gun being fired, and the Doc went down on his knees, with his arms thrown up over his face, as if to shield himself from a light too bright to bear. Then, almost in the same moment, Zoe was moving, her rifle held over her head like a club. She brought the butt down, hard, onto the Captain's skull. Everything went still for a moment, like time was taking a sit-down. The Captain gazed into the distance, blank and puzzled-like, and Jayne wanted to, could not, wanted to, could not, draw his gun fast enough. Then he went down, and Jayne was standing over the two bodies, his pistol drawn against Zoe, whose rifle was drawn against him.

"Stand down," said Zoe, tight and hard.

"Like hell," said Jayne, trying his best to keep his manly demeanor intact. "How do I know you ain't gonna go for me next?"

"Nobody else is gonna die on this boat, Jayne," said Zoe. "Not while I'm standing."

And Jayne knew that she meant it.

"Doc," she called, "where you hit?"

Simon drew his arms away from his face, and ran them over his body, checking to see that he was still there. His hands were shaking.

"I'm not," he said, finally.

Zoe nodded.

"Just as well," she said. "You and Jayne take him to the infirmary. You'll see to him, Doc."

It was not a question. Still, the Doc seemed to consider a moment, weighing duty and threat against inclination. Then, in the same moment, Jayne and Simon moved to their Captain's side.

When Mal finally opened his eyes, the world was fogged up, full of hazy shadows that he couldn't name. He blinked, frantically, trying to clear his vision. When the landscape finally resolved, he saw Zoe, standing over him with tight lips and empty eyes.

"Who hit me?" he said.

Zoe stared him down, in the way that only she had ever been able to do, with the cool resolve that made her seem more a force of nature than a woman.

"You," he said. He couldn't quite conjure it; his voice cracked under the weight of doubt. "Aw, hell, Zoe, if I'd meant to hit the pisslicker, I'd have done it. You know that."

"Your intentions were a mite hazy at the time, sir." said Zoe. "But when a man fires his weapon at an unarmed civilian, his meaning generally ain't benevolent."

Mal rolled his eyes. The slight effort made him sick. His head still felt weak, like he had a weight in there, tumbling around.

"You got a bump on the head, sir," said Zoe. "It'll heal up on its own. Nothing to worry on."

"You hit me," Mal said. He sounded a bit more certain this time, as if the truth were a flower opening in his brain.

"I ain' t saying the boy made the right call, sir," said Zoe. "I'm saying you made the wrong one."

"The boy is still getting off this boat when we land at Angel," Mal said. "That's been resolved on. So I'm questioning myself as to why you're here."

Zoe turned away from him for a moment, passing her fingers over the glittering array of blades on the surgical tray. She swallowed, hard, as if the words she meant to say were choking her.

"Just this," she said. "When he does get off, I'm going with him."

END OF PART I


End file.
